Chinese Crypto Wallet Cobo Raises $13 Million, Eyes Global Expansion

Plans for worldwide growth are on track for cryptocurrency wallet startup Cobo after it managed to raise US$13 million in a Series A round.

The cryptocurrency wallet startup, which is based in Beijing, China, has set its sights on expanding in the United States as well as in Southeast Asia particularly Indonesia and Vietnam. The Series A round was led by Chinese family office Wu Capital and DHVC. This brings the total amount that Cobo has raised in Series A to approximately US$20 million since it was founded in 2017, according to a press release.

Currently, the Chinese crypto startup possesses two flagship products – a cryptocurrency hardware wallet known as Cobo Vault and a multi-asset cryptocurrency software wallet named Cobo Wallet. Since Cobo Wallet was unveiled earlier this year, it has amassed over half a million users.

Passive Income Opportunities

The Cobo Wallet applies a Proof of Stake mining rewards system allowing users to grow their digital assets and supports PoS cryptocurrencies such as VeChain, Tron, Zcoin, Dash, LiteBitcoin, Decred and Ontology.

“Cobo’s unique approach redefines the concept of crypto asset management and creates new opportunities for investors. The team leverages their extensive blockchain experience to help safeguard users’ assets while also generating returns for their benefit. We believe Cobo will lead an entirely new user experience for PoS coin holders,” DHVC’s Managing Director, Judy Yan, said.

Besides PoS digital assets, Cobo Wallet also supports a couple of Proof of Work and Delegated Proof of State coins as well as about 500 tokens.

The successful fundraising exercise by a Chinese cryptocurrency startup is just the latest proof that despite last year’s ban on cryptocurrency trading in the world’s second-largest economy, domestic crypto and crypto-related firms either headquartered or founded in mainland China are thriving.

Crypto Mining Dominance

For instance, Beijing-headquartered Bitmain Technologies is now the biggest Application Specific Integrated Circuit-cryptocurrency mining hardware firm in the world, as it noted in a filing for its upcoming IPO. The firm whose revenues have been growing at an average annual rate of 328.2% currently commands nearly three-quarters of the market.

“According to Frost & Sullivan, we are the largest global ASIC-based cryptocurrency mining hardware company in terms of sales revenue in 2017, accounting for a market share of 74.5%. We offer a variety of mining hardware equipped with proprietary ASIC chips under our Antminer brand,” Bitmain wrote in the filing recently.

In another indication that the sector is thriving in the world’s most populous country in spite of the regulatory climate, the Hurun Report, which features Chinese individuals whose net worth has exceeded 2 billion yuan, featured 13 entrepreneurs in the cryptocurrency field in this year’s list.